


Satellite (Ten Minutes)

by orphan_account



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Bedrooms, F/M, Gen, I've made a huge mistake, Metaphors, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-01
Updated: 2014-02-01
Packaged: 2018-01-10 18:28:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1163057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John has a question; Mary knows the answer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Satellite (Ten Minutes)

_9:45 p.m._

Smell of lavender as John turns down the bed: Mary did the wash today.

Linens rustle. “Have you called him yet?”

 _Shit._ John settles on his back, pulls his t-shirt smooth beneath him. “Called who?”

“John.” Mary reaches for him. Lies on her side. “You promised.”

“Tomorrow. I’ll do it tomorrow.” Her hand feels so small. Not soft: calluses on some of her fingers: old ones. Sherlock could read them but Sherlock is at Baker Street. “Promise.”

Mary squeezes his hand, kisses his cheek in a fog of Claire de la Lune. “You’re a terrible liar. Sleep well, love.”

Baker Street: remote, from here, as the moon.

 

_9:47 p.m._

Outside, no cars pass.

No lights flicker.

If you raise your child in the silence and long for the cacophony of Baker: are you a liar.

 

_9: 48 p.m_

John leans toward Mary.

“Do you think,” he says. Feels in the way her body shifts against his that she’s listening.

“Do I think what?”

The silence smells of lavender and perfume, feels heavy as a bullet to the chest.

“Never mind.”

 

_9:51 p.m._

Sherlock folded the serviettes.

Assigned the seats at the reception.

Wrote a bloody waltz and played it and swore before witnesses never to leave.

Then left.

Why.

 

_9:52 p.m._

John leans toward Mary.  

“I think he might,” John says. Stares at the ceiling.

A twitch: he startled her awake. “You think who might what?”

Can’t.

Could never.

“Go back to sleep,” says John.

Squeezes Mary’s hand.

 

_9:53 p.m._

We would never do that.

We would never do that to John Watson.

Would we.

Who is _we._

How Bainbridge had bled over the tiles.

How John had watched the wound inflicted, had not known it for what it was.

 

_9:54 p.m._

John leans toward Mary.

“John,” she says, sleep-slurred, no heat behind the words, “ask me, or leave me the fuck alone.”

_Sherlock’s long hands closing the curtains, resting warm on John’s back, teaching John to dance._

“Do you,” John says. Feels his heart beat hard in his chest. “Do you think he—Sherlock, I mean—do you think he might have—feelings? For me?”

Mary’s upturned face is shadowed, the far side of a distant satellite. “Of course he does. I thought you knew.” She frowns. “Does it bother you?”

The silence is lavender and moon-pale and John cannot lift his tongue, so heavy in his mouth.

 

_9:55 p.m._

“No,” says John, as no cars pass, as no lights flicker, but Mary is asleep.


End file.
